Skins (original Spanish title Pieles) is a 2017 film about body identity and deformity explored by several intersecting stories. It opens with Simon, who's wife has just given birth, who is seeking to satisfy a dark desire to get it out of his system. He settles on Laura, a beautiful 11 year old with an amazing voice and skin over where her eyes ought to be, and leaves her with a gift of two jewels to be her eyes. We then meet Samantha who has an anus for a mouth (and, it later turns out, a mouth for an anus), Itziar an overweight café owner, Ana a woman with a large tumor on her face, Guille a burn victim, Christin a teenager who despises his legs and wants to get rid of them, and Vanesa a dwarf who plays a beloved child's TV figure. It's equal measures of disgusting, touching, and funny as the characters grapple with accepting their true self.
No relation to Skins, a 2002 film about murder on an Indian Reservation.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Twice. First, Samantha runs over Christin (he had intentionally hidden by the side of the road and extended his legs at the last second, hoping they will be damaged enough to be amputated, only to die of blood loss. Then, when Vanesa throws the suitcase of cash out the window, her agent dives after it, only to miss catching himself, and dying on impact with the pavement.
- Eat the Evidence: When Itziar steals Laura's eyes, she hurriedly puts them in her mouth to hide them, and then accidentally swallows them. What proceeds is a very uncomfortable scene where she gives herself an enema to get them back out.
- Karma Houdini: Guille guilts Ana for Ernesto continuing to call her, steals a briefcase of money from a recently dead man, and is shown to have gotten the plastic surgery he wanted to repair his appearance.
- Little People Are Surreal: Played with. Vanesa and one of the madams at Laura's workplace are little people. Vanesa gets treated like a little child, being picked up and moved places, and the madam of the brothel has to remind people that while she is little, she is an adult and needs to be treated like one. Nevertheless, they are otherwise treated as normal people who have a physical condition.
- Vagina Dentata: A pair of would-be rapists learn the hard way that Samantha's mouth not only looks like a mouth, but also has teeth.
